The present invention pertains generally to optical scanning systems and more particularly to high speed, high resolutions systems for scanning documents and producing digital binary data representative of this scanned information. Data scanning systems are useful for various purposes including storage and transmission of documentary material in a form of digital binary data. The digital binary data can be stored on magnetic disk storage media in an economical and convenient manner. Scanning systems using magnetic storage media comprise an extremely useful means for reducing hard filed documentation. With the advent of development of high speed computer communications technology and the significant increase in data storage handling capabilities of currently available hardware, digital binary data can be rapidly transmitted and stored at high data transmission rates.
A major disadvantage, however, of prior art data scanning systems has been the inability of these systems to provide a high speed process which is capable of providing a high resolution signal. Both high speed and high resolution is required in many applications to make such a system feasible, especially where large volumes of documentary material must be scanned at a high rate of speed with sufficient detail for reproduction of the documentary material with a high degree of resolution. To date, prior art scanning systems have been unable to provide a high resolution, high speed scanning system. High resolution systems have been available which operate at slow speeds, such as laser scanner devices which serially illuminate each pixel element with a laser beam. Although such systems provide a high degree of resolution, they have a quite slow operating speed since each pixel element is singly illuminated during the laser scanning process. Prior art high speed systems, on the other hand, have a low resolution and provide inadequate reproduction of the scanned data in many applications. An example of such a high speed, low resolution system is a facsimile device which utilizes a vidicon camera to scan the documentary data. Consequently, although such systems can operate at high speeds to scan a large amount of data, the resolution provided is insufficient for many applications.
Hence, the prior art has been unable to provide both a high speed and high resolution document scanner system.